The way yen has depreciated and Japanese markets have come down, do you think this is more like a panic reaction?

Yes, normally whenever there is an artificial event like this, it is a terrible tragedy, but also buying opportunity because we assume we are not going to have gigantic earthquakes every year. So it is normally a buying opportunity. It is a question of when you step in to buy.

What is your call on India and does it seem like what is happening across Japan may actually have ripple effects across the Asian basket when it comes to liquidity flows?

No, I do not see why it would affect India very much but there may be some Japanese funds being repatriated into Japan to help rebuild Japanese insurance companies and banks and savers who have to bring money home or the yen may go up but I do not think there is very much of that money in India right now, it is elsewhere.

Japan happens to be a large importer of both hard and soft commodities, will this hit commodity demand and the outlook for commodity prices in the near term?

No, it will increase demand because with the nuclear power plants being closed down or damaged or under duress, Japan will have to import more oil, everybody in the world will now look at their nuclear power plants again and probably have more demand for oil and natural gas. Japan is now going to rebuild, that is going to cause big increases in demand for copper and other things. Japan wasn't building very much in the past 10-15 years, now there is going to be a big jump in the demand for building materials in Japan.

What is the call on crude though because what transpired in Japan had its repercussions on crude as the commodity, we did see a spike up come in on Friday as well, what levels do you foresee, how high could crude rise in the near term?

I have no idea in the near term. I am very bad on short term trading or market timing. I do know that over the next few years, price in crude is going to go much higher. The world is running out of known reserves of crude oil.

If I look at data for the week gone by, soft commodities and hard commodities have both corrected now. We could say it could be because of Japan or this could be routine profit booking but to your mind, is every decline a good buying opportunity to buy both soft and hard commodities?

Yes, this is going to increase demand for many commodities. This is the new source of demand for copper and lead and things that nobody expected of new demand coming out of Japan, now there is a lot of new demand coming out of Japan. If the rest of the world goes into an economic slowdown because of this, then governments around the world are going to print even more money, that is the wrong thing to do but that is what they will do and whenever they print money, it is good for real asset, commodities.

Last time when we interacted on this forum with you, your top trades were rice and silver, are they still your preferred bets?

You should always look at things that are depressed when you are looking at some place to buy. Silver is much more depressed than gold, rice is more depressed than soybean. Most commodities are going to benefit from this terrible tragedy because there is going to be certainly new sources of building materials and energy sources because people are worried about nuclear power now, Japan will rebuild and I would suspect this going because more demand for food, because Japan is going to have more difficulties producing in agriculture. So if things correct for a while, I would think it is a good time to buy, certainly not to sell.